The Taste of Salt (12 page)

I couldn't help but see him. He and I were the only black people in the room. He was standing alone, holding a guacamole-covered chip. I went right over to him.

“So, welcome to Woods Hole.”

He shoved his chip into his mouth quickly and stuck his hand out. “Hi, I'm Ben Davidson.”

“Josie Henderson.”

He had a firm, dry grip and very direct brown eyes. “I wasn't sure if I'd be the only one.”

“Well, I've been the only for a while but yeah, now we're taking over.”

He grinned. “Taking over Woods Hole. Yeah. Black Power.”

We smiled at each other wordlessly for a minute. Then Daniel came over with our beers and Ben's girlfriend, Leslie, came out of the bathroom (a thin blonde with red-framed glasses) and we did introductions all around and started talking about the department and life in Woods Hole and so on.

It was easy to stand there. Daniel would occasionally touch the small of my back as if to make sure I was still with him. Ben was funny and almost unnervingly smart, opinions and remarks and questions flying out of him like bullets. I gave as good as I got. Leslie didn't talk much but she smiled at what we had to say. I had one more beer than I usually do and I had a really good time, laughing and hugging Daniel exuberantly and talking very loudly and once or twice touching Ben on the shoulder to make a point. After a while, I didn't even mind that there were only Doritos. I ate a lot of them. Suddenly, I was starving.

I
WORK IN THE
newer building at Woods Hole—it's called the Marine Research Facility and it's on a back road about two miles outside of the center of town. In many ways, the town grew up around the old building, which has been there since the 1930s. Daniel works there as well. It's big, constructed in old red brick, and covered with ivy—it looks like some of the old schools in Cleveland. The research
facility is just off a beautiful bike path between Falmouth and Woods Hole. I love to ride it, but because I work late so often, I don't ride as much as I'd like. I don't like to bike around the Hole at night. There's no crime to speak of, but it's pitch dark along the bike path. The city girl in me still hates the absolute dark of a country night.

Anyway, it was a perfect day for a ride. I was cruising along, thinking of nothing in particular, when I heard someone pedaling up on my right. “Hey.” I swerved a little, startled. It was Ben. He had mentioned at the party that he was going to be working in the same building I did.

“Hey, Ben. On your way to work? You and Leslie don't live over here, do you?”

“No, no, we live across the canal. But I love to ride, so I drive over the bridge and try to squeeze in a little whenever I can.”

“I know, it's nice, right? I feel so lucky to live in a place like this. Seeing the ocean every day.”

“I know. Back home … well, it wasn't much like this back home.”

“Are you from Miami originally?”

“Nah. Hardly anybody's from Miami originally. Hardly anybody black anyway. I'm from Detroit.”

I squealed, a lot more girlishly than I usually do. “Hey, I'm from Cleveland! Struggling midwestern towns unite!”

We'd made it up the hill now and laughed as we locked our bikes to the rack. “Struggling midwestern towns unite,” he said. “Sad but true. Did you grow up in the city?”

“Born and raised. My parents still live there.”

“Me too. Me too.” He turned toward the building. “You going in?”

“Of course.”

“Then after you.”

“Where's your office?” I asked, once we'd gotten inside.

“Hmm.” He looked down at his iPhone. “Supposed to be number 195.”

“Hey, that's right next to me—it's been empty for a while. It'll be nice to have a neighbor.” He didn't say anything. But he smiled at me in a way that made my toes curl up inside my shoes. I looked away for a minute. When I looked back, he was still gazing at me, a ghost of that smile on his face. “Well,” I said, “well, good luck getting settled. We should get to work.”

“Right,” he said. And then he turned and unlocked his office door and went in. I stood in front of my door for a second and then let myself in. My hands shook a little. I started working—but I could hear him moving around through the wall, blinds going up and down, an occasional cough.

After that, we were friendly to each other in the halls
and we had lunch together a few times—lunches at which I was careful to mention Daniel frequently and refrain from any physical contact. I have to admit, I liked seeing his dark face around. He wasn't a knockout in the traditional sense. But he had clear, dark eyes that always seemed to really
see
me and a pretty, generous mouth. He wore sort of Buddy Holly-looking glasses that somehow suited his narrow face. But I told myself that noticing all this was just how it was—I was married, not dead. No harm in noticing an attractive man.

After Ben had been working at the institute for about three weeks, we both ended up going out on the
Tioga
(that's the institute's research vessel—it's fantastic). For the first time in a while, some of the whales we had been tracking had come in close enough for us to observe them. We also needed to check up on some of the equipment we keep way offshore to monitor water conditions and such. I was glad to have the chance to get out of the office. It had been months since I'd been in the water and I was still on edge from my time in Cleveland, even though I'd only exchanged a few desultory texts with Tick. I'd been especially restless for the last couple of weeks, spinning in my office chair and playing desktop solitaire when I was supposed to be working.

The first time Ben and I ever discussed diving, not long after he started at the institute, I knew right away that he loved diving the way I did, another thing about him that I noted with pleasure. I was looking forward to seeing him in the water. We sat next to each other in the van that drove us out to the launch, not saying much. Our legs were almost, almost touching, so close that I could feel the heat of his skin. But we didn't talk about that. We just sat that way until we arrived and then hopped out of the van together and went over to the dock. But my chest felt a little tight, my stomach a little jumpy. I don't usually get nervous before a dive—it was odd.

I always get a kick out of seeing other divers' faces when they first catch sight of the
Tioga.
After he got his first good look at it, I could hear his short intake of breath—“Wow,” he said, “What a beautiful boat.”

I smiled.

“I know, isn't it? Sometimes I think I should pay them for getting to go out on it. Come on—let me show you.”

We hopped on deck and I showed him all around as we pushed off—he oohed and ahhed and said “oh man, that's great” at everything.

“This is the best research boat I've ever seen. I can't believe it. I can't believe I get to work here.”

Finally I said, “Yeah, I can't believe it either.”

After a while we got far enough out that we began to see whales in the distance and everything else was forgotten in the need to get to work and the never-diminishing thrill of seeing the whales. The captain said he was going to turn us about and that we'd better get ready if we wanted to get in the water today.

I was doing everything you always have to do—spitting in my mask, checking levels on my tank, making sure there were no holes in the equipment. Then I looked up and caught sight of Ben. He was similarly preoccupied, his head turned a little away from me, his wet suit pulled up over his legs but not yet all the way on. He was positioned so that the sun was behind him. It outlined his dark brown body and the back of his neck and suddenly it was like I'd been hit from behind. I understood my antsiness, my nervousness, everything. He didn't look at me. But I suddenly wanted him to. I cared whether or not he did. I was glad Daniel wasn't with us.

We went in together. Though I do love the whales, I've never liked the diving here as much as I liked warm-water diving. But that day was different: I loved it. Ben was a beautiful diver, moving so economically that he might have been part fish himself. The water pushed against my legs as hard as a lover, and I kicked and eased my way through it like it was where I belonged. It was where we both belonged. The
sound of my breath amplified by the mouthpiece went in and out of my ears glassily. Once or twice I felt as though I could hear him breathing, too. We did the work we needed to do in sync, as though we'd been diving together forever. We came out of the water at the same time, hauled up on deck, and half-stripped. We sat next to each other, not talking. He was the first one to speak. “A bunch of us are going out to the Captain Kidd tonight. You'll come with us, right?”

“Wouldn't miss it.”

“Good.”

Y
OU HAVE ALL THIS
energy after a good dive—it's like you've left planet Earth and come back. It's weird to be breathing and not to hear your own breath, the way you do underwater. If you hold your breath while you're diving, you can throw an air embolus or your lungs might collapse. Diving instructors have two approaches to teaching students this information: They either soft-pedal it, stressing that it's important but not being explicit, or they delight in the horror-show aspect of it, putting the fear of God into you so completely that you never, ever quit thinking of your lungs while you're diving for the first few times. My instructor was one of the latter types. He scared me so badly that I could hardly pay attention to what was around me my
first few dives. But then I started being unable to resist the beauty all around me and I started breathing more evenly and it was all right.

So that's how I was feeling once we got showered and back on land. It was around sixty-thirty or so. I called Daniel to see if he wanted to come, but even as I did it, I knew he wouldn't—he hates bars, and he wasn't all buzzed up the way I was. Is it terrible to say that I was glad he didn't come? Well, I was. There was a whole gang of us, my friend Sally Tobias from the Geology Department and Ben and about six other people. Only four of us had been on the dive—everyone else just wanted a drink. So off we went to the Captain Kidd, which has very good cheeseburgers and a vast array of beers. It doesn't look much different from any other bar you can think of: neon, the smell of booze, grit underfoot, graffiti in the bathroom. It's close to the bay, which is nice. If you step out to get some air, you can see the water. Anyway, there we were. I was sitting with my friend Sally and we were talking about … work? Not work? Something we read online? I can't remember. But here's what I remember: Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ben get up and go to the jukebox and incline his head toward it to pick a song. His neck had a kind of precise curve, as though it had been carefully sculpted by a loving hand. The blue light
of the jukebox reflected off his glasses and gave his face a bluish glow. His hands tapped the side of the juke, and I stared at them as if they would explain what was happening. Sally was still talking. I kept nodding, not hearing. He punched some buttons and then his song came on: Prince's version of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” I couldn't believe that song was on the jukebox, let alone that Ben had picked it—most people only know Sinead O'Connor's version, even though Prince wrote it. His version of it is on his greatest-hits album. The music vibrated through me as Ben walked away from the bar. I kept looking at him and I could feel, in the palms of my hands, every part of his body. I know this sounds silly. But it's what happened. I watched him the rest of the night. I said a few things to him at one point—something about how I loved that song. And he said “Yeah, I love it, too. You know how sometimes a song comes on and you know you'll never forget it. It just gets you at the right moment.” And I said “yeah” and my heart was slamming under my ribs. Prince washed over us both like a benediction. Someone called Ben's name and he turned away to answer. He talked a lot to everybody. He threw his head back when he laughed. His whole body got involved; he even slapped the table once. I thought about resting my mouth on one of his earlobes. His hand wrapped around
his beer bottle was the most interesting hand I'd ever seen. He looked at me once and his eyes got still. But then he went back to talking and laughing and I thought maybe I made it up. As I drove home I imagined sitting with him in a coffee shop sometime, holding hands and gazing at each other very steadily, not talking.

After that, working with him was different, for all that it was the same. We didn't have the same specialty but sometimes we had to collaborate. A few times, he came into my office and leaned over my computer to show me something in one of his reports and his arm brushed near my chest as he slid the mouse around and I knew. At that moment, I knew that this feeling I was having was not under my control. I was going to have it until I stopped having it, no matter how much sorrow and trouble it might cause.

What am I supposed to do with this? I'm married. I'm a married woman now. A married woman in her thirties. I'm not allowed to slide my hands down his shoulders, feel his skin next to mine, hear what kinds of sounds he'd make, feel his breath in my ear, look into his eyes, taste his sweat, feel that kinky hair under my hands after so many years of straight hair, after so many years of the same body, after so many years of the same man. I can't do that. I chose Daniel. I said I'd have him forever.

Sometimes when I wake up, I know I've dreamed about making love to Ben. Sometimes when I make love to my husband, I say Ben's name into the pillow, over and over, a chant, a dream, a wish. I don't tell anyone this. But I know it.

A month or so after Tick got home from Riverrun, reports from my mother were brief but mostly good news—or at least not bad news. He was going to work every day and a meeting almost every night.